


Survivor

by BananaCracker333 (bananacracker333)



Series: Sunrise, Sunset [1]
Category: Subnautica (Video Game)
Genre: Fuck you im saving my child, Gen, Nonbinary Character, Trans Male Character, avery is a badass pilot, eldritch hammerhead glowstick of death, i can be not serious here despite this being a serious fic, just let me have my fun, mute character, none gender left trans, ryley is a badass hacker, this is a series btw but im slow so give me time
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-06
Updated: 2018-08-06
Packaged: 2019-06-22 21:57:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,801
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15591561
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bananacracker333/pseuds/BananaCracker333
Summary: There was one human life sign on the planet. Avery had been horrified when he'd found out, that whole ship, with over 150 people on board. One survivor. Well it seems now there's two.(alternate title: glowsticks of death)





	Survivor

**Author's Note:**

> This will be a series? I just. I was going to put it all in one fic, but it wouldn't have read right, not with the plans I had. So enjoy.
> 
> This version of Avery Quinn is borrowed from frankensteinsrnonster on tumblr (previously hewwobrine)

With a ship this small and a hit this big, there wasn’t even time for alarms. He screamed as he felt the impact just as the compact escape pod closed up around the captain's chair. Everything flashed blue as the hard light shield activated before the metal began to churn into place around him. Captain Avery Quinn watched in horror as the green light burned his crew before the hard light shields could activate. He covered his eyes with his arm, torn between not wanting to see the burning green light blasting debris everywhere and wanting to look for any hope that his crew, even just one of them, survived. When he finally looked ahead, the emergency landing information was popping up on the space-grade glass in front of him, the world outside tinged blue from the hard light shield.  His heart ached when he saw the life sign counter down at 0. Nothing he could do now. He's alive. That'll have to be good enough for now.

On small trading ships like these, they usually get the fancy escape pods.  It’s regulation. And good thing too, because apparently a shot big enough can vaporize most of the ship. If it hadn’t have been for the space saving pods they’d had to install with the new regulations passed last quarter, he’d be fried by that blast, whatever it was. His ponderings were cut short by the systems coming online, orange lights appearing in front of him, hovering over the space-grade glass shield in front of him. “Computer, status.” 

“Emergency thrusters enabled.  Time until impact: 130 seconds. Hard light shield at full capacity. Trajectory appears to be towards an area of deep waters, further information required.”  A computerized voice told him what he needed to know, then continued to ramble off numbers and biological data interspersed with updates on the time until impact.  He got to work on familiarizing himself with the controls, taking care not to disturb the landing sequence. This was one thing he didn’t know how to do, and the computer was his best shot at survival. 

“Brace for impact in 10… 9… 8… 7…” Avery stopped listening to the countdown at that point, in favor of putting on the AEP helmet provided, along with the communication array.  He placed all he could into his compressed inventory, spare electronics and communication appliances, as well as the box of emergency rations that was stored under his seat. He spared one last second to the survivor on the planet, hoping they were…  _ Alright _ . After what just happened. And then the impact came.  His head hit the console, it was a good thing he had put the helmet on.  

“Post-impact analysis. Hard light shield at 74%. Structural integrity stable. Further scans indicate this is an ecological dead zone. Only fauna include microscopic organisms and leviathan class organisms. It would be advised to leave.”  _ Alright. So thrusters on. Immediately. _ He scrambled at the controls until he grabbed the handles in front of him, pushing them forward, feeling the jerk of the pod as the thrusters came to life. 

“Forward march. No use looking back.” He muttered to himself, pushing towards the blip on the HUD in front of him. “To dry land. To the survivor.” Even if he didn’t have a shuttle.  Or sufficient supplies to be of use. Two heads were better than one. Not to mention… The poor bastard had most likely been alone since the Aurora crashed. How many weeks had it been since the distress signal was sent out? Was the signal sent out when it crashed or did the survivor go back to the ship and send it? How long had they been alone?   _ I doubt I could have done it. _

He shook the thoughts from his mind, focusing on the distance marker. “2000 meters, roughly South, I can do that. Easy as pie. That’s not enough distance to have a problem with the… Leviathan class predators, right? Right?” The silence was killing him, as he piloted the pod, he kept reading off information from the HUD, mostly updates from the scanners. He found out that there was a large crater, about 2 square kilometers, with extensive biodiversity. Apparently that’s where he was headed. And how he was going to get away from these leviathans.

About 1500 meters out, a large red dot appeared on his hud. “That… Can’t be good.” He mutters to himself right before the red dot rushes towards the center of the radar.  He was clipped by something vaguely blue and absolutely  _ huge _ , moving too fast to see, and his pod goes spinning forward.  The computer said something about hard light shields being down to 72%, that’s manageable with the roughly 1275 meters left.  “Aux thrusters, aux thrusters! There!” Flipping a bright orange switch, the pod stabilized. He let out a sigh of relief, and kept moving forward, keeping a close eye on the radar.

_ That thing moved fast. That’s not what the whole planet’s like… Right? _ If that were the case, he really needed that survivor’s help.  Anyone who could survive those _ things _ for so long, well.  They’ve earned a healthy dose of both respect and fear. He'd barely closed 300 meters when he saw a blue light in front of him, closing quickly. The red dot appeared on the radar, another at his 7:00, and well. Avery did the first thing that came to mind. He went down. 

The maneuver spared him 70 meters, before he was hit from above, directly behind. An entry popped up on his screen, “Ghost Leviathan,” though he didn't read much else when he saw the shield dip below 60%. He gunned it towards the beacon, ducking and dodging the best he could. The entire pod shook, flinging violently to the Northeast as he was hit from the front.  “ _ Damn it all _ ” He looked at the distance counter, it had gone up fifty meters, and the shields had gone down to 51%. But, it looked like the communications were in range to broadcast short range to the survivor. Flooring it once again, he flipped on the telecom array, sighing in relief when the light blinked blue.

“Survivor? I’m far out, just barely made it into range. I know… I know I couldn’t help you.  But I may need some help of my own. I’m piloting an escape pod through… Hostile waters doesn’t seem to cut it honestly.” He laughed for a moment, before bracing for impact and hurtling forward 30 meters. 37%. “ _ Shit, _ now! Shields aren’t gonna make it at this rate, I’m about 850 meters from the landing site, headed roughly southbound.” He should have gotten a response by now. Maybe their communications were damaged? They had survived a rather massive crash in what had to have been a fairly basic lifepod. “I don’t know if you can hear me, but these hammerhead glowsticks of death really want to get at my ass. I could use a bit of assistance.” The alarms blared as another hit sent him spiraling sideways.  790 meters left on 21% shielding, the outputs weren’t giving him good numbers. “I hope to see you soon.” He grimaced, turning off the broadcast. 

“Scans indicate a massive volcanic crater supporting diverse life up ahead. It would be advisable to reach it as soon as possible.” And the scans didn’t lie, there was a massive wall up ahead,the end of this so called “Dead Zone”.  730 meters, he hadn’t been hit in a while. That in itself was enough to make his heart clench with anxiety. 

“Keep moving forward. Don’t look back.” Muttering the mantra that’s followed him all his life, he decided he probably  _ should have _ looked back in this case, as a duo of ghost leviathans hit him at once.  The Pod shot forwards, there was a wall of earth right in front of him. 500 meters left, 12% shielding. The pod shook one last time as it was sent rocketing up, the lights flashed red as the shields failed.  The display was replaced by structural integrity, at 97%; something must have gotten jostled in the chaos. No matter. Up and out. He watched the red dots disappear from the radar, and he let out a shaky breath. 

“Detecting a massive energy signature in the region. Cannot identify.” The AI spoke up, placing an orange blip on the map near where the marker for land was.  _ Huh _ .

“That would have been nice to know a half hour ago, honestly!” Reining in his anger, he took the controls, and headed towards the landmass. He figured it was smooth sailing from here on out, right to the survivor. He took in the scenery, admittedly rather bleak, but still beautiful in a way.  There was the occasional purple… There weren’t any animals like these things to be honest. Scared the daylights out of him when he tried to get a closer look and it just disappeared in a glowing blue ball of light with a metallic screech. 

He was just rounding about the base of what appeared to be the landmass when a deafening roar echoed around him.  _ Shit.  _  He looked at the radar, smaller red dot than the others,  _ thank the stars _ , but still leviathan class.  Coming fast on the left. He steered up, hoping to reach land before the creature got to him.  The entry popped up on his computer, “Reaper Leviathan”. Honestly, he didn’t need to read much more than the name to know “this thing is bigger than you and it has teeth,” and he figured that was enough information for now. 

He was wrong.  The thing had fucking  _ mandibles.  _ It grabbed his pod and shook, Avery slammed down every button he could see but nothing worked.   _ This is it, i’m going to die here, so close to the finish line. _ Then he realized, the comms were online.  He could still ping the survivor. If nothing else, they might have something. 

He flipped the telecomm array one last time, watching the lights blink on with satisfaction.  “Survivor? I need a favor.” The alarms blared in the background, indicating that integrity was below 50%.  “Something called a Reaper Leviathan seems to have a taste for my pod and I only just barely made it past the Ghost Leviathans. I probably can hold out for a few minutes so I _ really  _ hope you’re close.” He flipped the broadcast switch off, in case the survivor was going to respond somehow, he didn’t want to jam the frequency.  No incoming message. Water was leaking in through cracks in the glass, when, miraculously, the leviathan let go of the pod.

Well. “Let go” is a bit generous.  The pod was flung into the mountain, which was apparently enough to bust a hole in the glass shield.  Water rushed in, disorienting Avery for a moment, before he managed to dislodge himself from the pod’s chair and peek out of the hull.  He froze for a moment, not fully expecting to see what was in front of him. There was a person, climbing out of a small submarine with a weapon of sorts.  They fired at the leviathan, who was rather disoriented and twitching, from what it seemed. All of the sudden, a bright blue sphere blew up around the reaper’s head, appearing to keep it still.  _ Now or never,   _ He kicked out of the pod, pushing towards the person,  They seemed to see him, and pointed up.  _ Up, I can do up.   _

He swam up, without the boosters of the pod it seemed to take forever. He was beginning to wonder if his oxygen tank would hold out when--”Woah!” The survivor grabbed him around the waist and with some sort of propulsion unit, pulled them both up to a sandy beach. Avery pulled himself up onto his feet and wobbled on shaky legs for a moment.  The survivor offered a hand, which he waved away. After he had leaned on his knees for a minute and gained his legs, he stood up straight, heels sinking into the wet sand. 

“Name’s Avery Quinn. It seems that the rescue went a little backwards, much appreciated, my apologies, not much I could do about it in all honesty.” He stuck out his hand for the survivor, who was taking off their helmet.  The other person stared at his hand for a long time, they looked hesitant. “Don’t worry, promise I don’t bite. I imagine you haven’t run into many things like that for a while, though.” He almost took back his hand when the survivor reached forward and grabbed his hand. Shock went across their face for a moment, and it honestly made Avery incredibly sad. “What’s your name, survivor?”

They looked at him. They opened their mouth a few times, before their face twisted and they shut their mouth again. They reached up to their temple, near the base of the blue streaks in their hair, and he saw a jagged, angry scar. “Oh. Oh okay.  You can hear, though.” The only response was a nod. “We can work with this.” He smiled. “You're still all in there after all. Do you know sign language? I do. Have a little sister back home, she was in a nasty hovercraft collision when she was really young. Not too different from you if you think about it.” Avery smiled at them, and waited to see if there was any sort of response. Slowly, they started moving their hands, spelling out something. “Okay… R… Y… L… E… Y, your name is Ryley?” A nod from the other confirms, and he smiles. “Nice to meet you Ryley. If you're a little shaky on the sign language, I can help you out. We can probably rig a text to speech thing on a PDA as well for the time being. Sound like a plan?” They nod, and point down the beach. 

“Structure. Weapon. You need to see.” They signed out, a bit slowly, walking in the direction they pointed. 

“Alright so there's something i need to see? Is this what shot my ship down?” He didn't get much of an answer, but to be fair Ryley hadn't had much practice in conversation for a while.  They rounded a corner and Avery couldn't believe his eyes. There was a massive alien structure, black as the shadow it cast, standing tall above the shore. Looking down, he saw it dipped into the ocean as well.  There was an opening, right on the beach. It looked like there was a glowing purple device attached to a raised platform, he assumed it was some sort of terminal because there were all kinds of wires attached to the device and the platform, all running to a PDA that was laying in the sand. ”I'm guessing that you're some kind of computer whiz?” He asked, more to the air than the silent person leading him. He got more than he expected, honestly. Ryley turned their head and grinned, giving a small nod before going into the facility.

Ryley seemed to have a few other of the computer stations set up around in several places, a network of transmitters connecting everything. “How long have you been working on this? What were you doing?”

They stopped and stared at him for a while, before grabbing the PDA. “Trying to tell you not to come. Trying to deactivate. Trying to do  _ anything _ .” They motioned with their free hand for him to keep following. “You need to know something.” They brought him to a room with a large column at the back, crackling slightly. He watched as they went up to it, and jumped slightly as it  _ grabbed his damn arm and stabbed it.  _ They winced, rubbing at their arm, and pointed at the pda hooked up to the column. He picked it up, wary, but read the latest entry. 

”Infected individuals? What's wrong with you? Are you okay?” Avery's horror grew when they shook their head. ”What is it? Space chlamydia? Don't laugh, I'm serious!” 

They fiddled with their PDA for a moment, before showing him a folder of entries entitled ”Kharaa”. Avery took it, leafing through the admittedly few entries that they'd collected. ”I see why you've been so busy. Looming death does that to a man… Woman… Neither? I'm getting a neither kind of vibe from you if you don't mind me saying.” Avery asked, handing the PDA back to Ryley.

They took it, smirking, and typed ”what was your first hint? The hair or the name?”

Avery smiled, putting a hand on their shoulder. ”Call it a trans man’s intuition. But the hair is pretty iconic. How the hell do you get  _ hair gel _ ?” All he got was a laugh, but that's enough of a win for today. 


End file.
